finding the hidden treasures in life

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Archive | June 2013

Anyone who knows me knows that I am usually a pretty positive person. Life can throw curve balls and I either dodge or adjust to catch them. I try to find the silver lining to every cloud.

Lately though, it seems like one thing after another has gone wrong, is going to go wrong or is currently going wrong. I know, that’s a little over-dramatic and probably not entirely true, but when it’s one thing after another, I tend to make mountains out of molehills. 🙂

A friend of mine used to have a “Complaining minute” with her friends. Lisa Jo has 5-minute Fridays. 5 minutes to write on a word that she gives. Unedited, raw, from the heart.

Well, one minute will never work. I’ve decided to play off Lisa’s great idea and write for 5 minutes…. about everything that is currently bugging me. Here goes:

I have two kids that are somewhat difficult to work with and live with. Sadly, they are difficult for other people to get along with as well, but they blame all of their life problems on me. I have one kid who has a food obsession. I’m exhausted when I go to get something to eat, and it’s gone. Again. Especially when it’s all been eaten by one person. Chad and I have been working on the dryer for a week. A WEEK! It took a week to get the part that we thought we needed. We took our machine apart, replaced that part, put it back together, and it ran, with heat! YAY! For 4 loads. 😦 So we took it apart AGAIN. Cleaned it completely out, cleaned out the vent, COMPLETELY, replaced the part again. It ran, with heat! For 3 loads, maybe. UGH. So now, I have laundry hanging from my front porch. Sorry to the neighbors, but they were wet and I don’t have another good place to hang it. I have plenty of people who have offered to let me use their dryer, but the logistics baffle me. It just seems so darn inconvenient to wash a load, run a load to a friend’s, then have to go back. My house literally feels like it’s falling apart. We are trying to get things back together, but every time we turn around, something else goes wrong. Just today the trim came off the floor. I mean, does this happen to ANYONE else? Anyone, anyone?

I love my life, I do. I know that some people say this is the life I created by my choices and it’s true. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not sometimes hard, because it sure is. Sometimes I want that easy button… and it’s not there.

Wow! That was 5 minutes? It honestly didn’t seem like it was. That went by… fast. So, now, I get back to it, and hope this made me feel better, because I am about 5 minutes away from “I’ve had it”.

Work hard and love school or else you’ll be asking “Do you want fries with that?”

This picture sends the message that you better work hard in school or you’re going to end up working in fast food, asking “do you want fries with that?”.

Maaaaaaaan, this line of thinking just raises my hackles and makes me want to come out fighting. With sarcasm, of course. (I’m fluent)

First of all, what is wrong with working in fast food? I mean, other than the whole “people shouldn’t be eating fast food” argument? No matter how we personally feel about fast food, people are eating it, they are eating a lot of it and this creates a need. A need for employees. This is where those uneducated fools, who never liked school come in, right?

Not even.

I knew a woman with a degree in Criminal Justice who was working at the local supermarket. WHAAAAAAAT? This might make some of you wonder why she was “wasting her degree”. Did she work all that time in college for NOTHING? No. As a matter of fact, she had taken the job in the supermarket, because she needed to support her family, but she needed to support them during the hours that employees were not needed in criminal justice type positions. Rather than support from those around her, she was criticized for sacrificing her degree. I applauded her for not sacrificing her family.

People who believe that you should do good in school or you will end up in a dead end job seem to forget that we NEED people in those “dead end” jobs. We need fast food servers, toilet scrubbers, dishwashers, ditch diggers, plumbers, cashiers, etc.

I did well in school. I had a great GPA, I took some of the best classes, I studied hard, I worked hard and now… I’m just a mom in some people’s eyes. My husband didn’t do well in school and he often thinks that is why he has ended up where he has employment wise. We need people who sell truck parts, like he does, too. Nobody to sell truck parts, nobody to drive trucks, nobody to deliver food to stores, nobody to check that food in, nobody to stock it, nobody to ring it up means no food for you!

I am absolutely NOT saying that kids should not work hard and do well in school. Not at all! I am saying that I am not measuring the success of MY children or YOUR children by where they end up in the world. I don’t care if they end up as a fast food server or a wall street broker, because we need both of them and we need everyone in between.

I love what my grandpa used to say. “It doesn’t matter if you end up as a ditch digger, but you make darn sure that you are the best ditch digger you can be”.

If you are a student right now, you be the best student you can be. If you are a fast food server, you be the best fast food server you can be. I, for one, will not be measuring your success by what you’re doing. It is much more important to me that you do what you’re doing and you do it well.

Do you know what I am looking forward to most now that it is summer time?

For three solid months, I will not have to hear “no school today?” when my children and I are out in public during regularly scheduled school time. When I say “they’re homeschooled”, I get the look. The one that says “You. Homeschool? Right” Yeah. I can hardly believe it myself.

I’ve tinkered with the idea of homeschooling since my 13 year old started school, but it was something I never thought I could do. Now that I have lived through the first year of homeschooling, I’m still questioning if I can do it. 😉

I am really not qualified for this. I mean, I’m “just” a mom. I’m pretty smart and I always scored high on IQ tests, so I certainly know my stuff. Unfortunately, I am more of an “I’ll do it myself, rather than teach you” type person. It is hard for me to sit down and actually TEACH from a curriculum. I can teach my kids to cook, bake, make crafts, because those are all done by working side by side and demonstrations and all of a sudden they catch on and we move on. School work doesn’t always work like that. I also really, really like it when my kids work on their own and ask me questions as needed. My kids don’t work like that though. 🙂

So, here I am, again, in a position that I feel completely unqualified for, but for various reasons, we made a decision as a family that this was the best option for us, for now. This year has been kind of a “stick our toes in the water and go knee deep if a shark doesn’t bite our toes off” kind of year. We’ve had to find our new normal. As if homeschooling wasn’t enough, my brother passed away, my husband started a new job and we had a baby. So we have had a year with a lot of changes and adjustments and new normals. Right when we figured out one new normal, we were hit with another one.

It’s my hope that the next year is a little less exciting. Please remind me of this when I come back and say how bored I am. Yes, homeschooling moms of 5 get bored. They I really do.

So yes, I homeschool, no I’m not qualified, but by gosh, we will figure this out eventually.

Have you met our beautiful four month old? Yeah, I know you have, but here you go anyway:

disclaimer: her 13 year old sister was standing right next to her, there was no worries about her falling off the bed.

Cute, isn’t she?

So, yeah, 4 months old. Safe to say I haven’t lost ALL the baby weight yet. From when I was pregnant with my now 13 year old. I’m working on it. I even just signed up for http://www.dailyburn.com!

Yesterday, Chad, Charlee and I spent the day together. When you have 5 kids, this is nothing short of a miracle. We went to Farmer’s Market for the beautiful flowers.

We ate lunch because we didn’t have to pay for 6 people. 🙂 We drove north to buy diapers and clothes for little Charlee at one of our favorite second hand shops.

But…. let’s back up to that Farmer’s Market, shall we?

When we were about finished at Farmer’s Market, we decided to stop by the bathrooms first. I pushed the stroller over while Chad carried Charlee. We pulled up behind another lady who was already waiting. Chad said I could go in first and he waited in the shade with little Miss. I chit chatted with the lady in front of me. When a restroom opened up, she turned to me and said

“You’re expecting, you go first.”

Trust me, I was as surprised as you are.

I could have gotten angry. I could have corrected her. But I didn’t. Five years ago, I might have been upset about it.

I figured she was being polite. She really thought she was helping and doing a good thing. I didn’t see ANY reason to make her feel bad. I looked at her and said “oh, thank you!” I told my husband “I just got into the bathroom first because I need to lose weight. I bet it doesn’t work for you”. Then I started scheming about how I was going to post this on Facebook.

Come on, this is 2013, this is what we do.

I came to a few conclusions after this little incident:

I hope she doesn’t know something I don’t.

I should probably work out twice a day.

I probably SHOULD NOT have gone to McDonald’s for a soft serve ice cream. (It was really, really good)

Later, as I was texting with a friend over this situation, I came to the realization that I would much rather this lady think that I am expecting than KNOW that I need to lose 25 pounds. Babies are a blessing. Extra weight, not so much.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go work out. Or something.

Has anyone ever thought you were expecting when you weren’t? How did you react?